How is the world’s most popular social media site progressing into 2011 and beyond?
Answers to this and other questions were discussed in April at the Facebook F8 Developers Conference, and some of the results are starting to take shape late in the year.
When founder Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook officials held the third consecutive conference earlier this year in San Jose, California, a number of topics relevant to expanding the ever-growing site were discussed.
The Facebook Platform was one such hot topic at the conference. Last year, Zuckerberg was been touting the limitless possibilities that come with maximizing social and personalized experiences across the web for the more than 600 million people who use the service he founded.
Zuckerberg’s quest to socialize the entire web comes through an initiative dubbed the Open Graph API.
“Like” buttons have been appearing on myriad websites – from blogs to commercial sites – in an effort to connect users from their favorite Internet destinations to their personal Facebook profile page. A growing number of companies also are prominently displaying their presence on their sites with Facebook logos cropping up at a growing pace.
At last year’s conference, Zuckerberg announced Facebook would teamed up with three outside entities to build on its social media platform. One of those sites, Yelp, offers user-submitted reviews of top restaurants, shopping, nightlife and entertainment venues.
Ben Bleikamp, Yelp’s designer and product manager, says the partnership has created an enhanced experience for users.
“One of the coolest features (from the partnership) is that Yelp can now be instantly personalized for new users if they have a Facebook account,” Bleikamp says. “A new user will land on Yelp and be able to see which Facebook friends have reviewed a business and easily read their reviews.”
Another site working in tandem with Facebook and its customization process is Pandora, an Internet radio service that gives users an opportunity to create their own playlists based on artists they enjoy. Officials from both sides have described the partnership as a win-win since both entities thrive on social experiences on the Internet.
The third service partnership is with Microsoft Docs, and the arrangement has given users an opportunity to post everything from recipes to resumes within their social network.
Since rolling the new services out earlier this year, tweaks and refinements have been made as bugs are worked out.
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